The Firing of School Choice Advocate Corey DeAngelis Is Classic Cancel Culture
Shame on the LGBT activists who falsely insinuated that school choice must be anti-gay—and shame on the conservatives who act like it is.
Corey DeAngelis, an education researcher known for his vigorous advocacy of school choice, has been fired by his primary employer, the American Federation for Children (AFC), a person familiar with the situation tells Reason. (DeAngelis is also a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation, which publishes this website.)
DeAngelis regularly feuds on social media with supporters of the education status quo, including Democratic politicians, media figures, and teachers union leader Randi Weingarten. But he is currently at odds with some allies who have turned on him following revelations that he previously performed in a pornographic film for gay audiences.
The trouble began on September 20, when the conservative Substack Current Revolt called attention to his history with the porn industry. Several conservative organizations then rescinded invitations for him to speak, and AFC fired him.
"Corey is no longer at AFC," a spokesperson for the group told Reason in an email. "We wish him well in his next endeavors, and we remain focused on our mission to expand educational opportunity for families, particularly lower-income families, across the country."
DeAngelis declined to comment, but he wrote on X: "As an activist for parental rights and school choice, my passion is personal. Just like everyone else, I have made mistakes throughout my life, learned from those mistakes, used that as an opportunity to grow and tried to channel that experience into something positive. I was a victim of poor decisions and poor influences. I have turned that experience into the fuel that fires me to save young people from being put in the same position I was put in and to help parents protect their children. I will never stop fighting for what is right."
What's happening to DeAngelis is a classic example of cancel culture: He is being punished for a regretted incident from his distant past that has nothing to do with his current job. Conservative organizations may well have morals clauses in their contracts, and they are free to hire and fire at will. But any institution that purports to oppose cancel culture, yet refuses to work with DeAngelis on this basis, is engaged in hypocrisy.
Ironically, it is DeAngelis being accused of hypocrisy—wrongly—by the progressive left. Left-leaning gay media outlets, including The Advocate and Pink News, are reveling in DeAngelis' cancelation; both led with headlines describing him as an "anti-LGBTQ+ activist" who has been exposed as a gay film actor. The clear implication is that there is some tension between his past work and his present political views—akin to an anti-gay religious figure or Republican politician who has been caught in a sex scandal.
Of course, neither outlet does the work of demonstrating that DeAngelis is in fact an "anti-LGBTQ+ activist." Some critics even imply that favoring charters, vouchers, or education savings accounts is de facto evidence of anti-LGBTQ sentiment, a flatly absurd claim.
It's true that DeAngelis has worked alongside groups and individuals that are often described as anti-gay, such as Moms for Liberty and PragerU. These groups often object to being characterized that way, instead claiming that they are merely opposed to the ways sexuality is discussed in schools. Their misleading claims about the widespread infiltration of "groomers" into the school system, however, can plausibly be read as evincing some anti-gay prejudices. School choice advocates should consider whether such associations do more harm than good. But it's intellectually lazy to presume that these prejudices are shared by everyone who has ever agreed on some aspect of a broader education reform agenda.
Take Sarah Kate Ellis, president of GLAAD, who told The Advocate: "Corey DeAngelis is yet another public figure whose anti-LGBTQ extremism already makes him deeply unqualified to be an expert in improving safety and education at school. Latest news on DeAngelis further reveals his baseless, hypocritical attempt to profiteer and score political points. DeAngelis is a sideshow charlatan."
Again, one might have expected these LGBTQ-aligned organizations and media voices to provide some evidence of the charge of hypocrisy. Instead, they pointed to several statements he made on Fox News and X in which he criticized "the woke mind virus" and adopted the conservative framing that public schools are indoctrinating kids. It's fine to disagree about whether this is actually a problem in public schools; it's not fine to casually assert that any criticism of social justice or sexual themes being introduced in classrooms is, by default, anti-gay.
The purpose of school choice is not to force the curriculum to be more or less LGBTQ-friendly. The point is to empower families to make choices that best fit a child's education needs. Supporters of school choice do not want to fight a war to decide which single, universal standard will be applied to all students; that's a recipe for disaster, since not everyone will agree on what content is appropriate for their children. The solution is to let individual schools make those decisions and compete to attract young people who are aligned with their views. Many schools in such a system could well be even more progressive and affirming of gay kids.
Conservatives who were happy to work with DeAngelis before but are participating in his cancellation now should reconsider. There is no tension between DeAngelis's decision, a decade ago, to appear in a gay pornographic film, and his current work calling for more freedom in education.
